home and design Archive

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and when you’re trying to live in small confines, some new thinking might indeed be necessary. However, there are also historic examples that may prove to provide solutions that make downsizing...

The short vocabulary quiz I created after paging through Barron’s Real Estate Handbook back in September was so popular that I’d been meaning to create another. And in a serendipitous moment, A Field Guide to American Houses: The Definitive...

Being able to point out features that make a home accessible is part of your job as a real estate professional. You can also help steer sellers looking into pre-sale or staging modifications away from changes that will unnecessarily...

By Melissa Dittmann Tracey QUICK SKIM Can’t sell a property? Maybe the home’s chi — or energy — is out of whack. In the new book Sell Your Home With Feng Shui (AuthorHouse, 2007), authors Christine Ayres and Cindy...

By Kelly Quigley, REALTOR® Magazine Celebrating the American Home by Joanne Kellar Bouknight (The Taunton Press, 2005). Buy this book from Amazon.com What makes a house extraordinary? This book attempts to answer that question by asking 50 of the...

By Kelly Quigley, REALTOR® Magazine The Getaway Home By Dale Mulfinger (The Taunton Press, 2004) Buy this book from Amazon.com If you have ever dreamed of building a vacation home to escape from your daily routine and spend time...

By Barbara Ballinger, REALTOR® Magazine Cottages: The New Style By James Grayson Trulove (Harper Design International, 2004) Buy this book from Amazon.com Unlike the grand “cottages” built by rich families at the turn-of-the-century in resorts such as the Adirondacks...

By Christina Hoffmann Spira, REALTOR® Magazine There’s no better—or briefer–way to describe this book, than to show you a few of the images that author Martin Poriss, a broker and business development consultant, has amassed in Real Estate Bargains:...